In her revisions Mary Shelley seems intent to plant certain elements crucial to the
plot very early in its exposition. In this case Victor Frankenstein's resuscitation
in the short term is balanced by an awareness of the underlying debility of his physique.
Later on, both in his autobiographical account and, afterwards, when Walton resumes
the narrative, he will manifest symptoms that a nineteenth-century reader would identify
with consumption—that is to say, tuberculosis.